Interior lights fade intermittently (SOLVED FUSE 41 DAMN YOU)

[Ricky Bobby]

I'm having a problem ever since I popped a fuse on my interior lights when I did the rear footwell light retrofit and ended up removing and reinstalling fuse 14 to get all the interior lights to work again (they all shut off when i "popped" the fuse but all I did was remove and reinstall and worked fine, fuse was NOT blown), the interior lights will fade out after the door is shut but will not fade out upon car startup, that still takes about 20 seconds. All doors were closed and no problems there. Yesterday I noticed my visor lights were not working, so after testing a bunch of fuses I finally went on WDS and found that fuse 42 controls the visor lights, I did the same thing, removed and reinserted and the lights worked fine. I suppose the GM3 or the LCM module "shuts" the circuit down if resistance is detected and you have to manually reset it by pulling and reinserting the fuse to get all lights to work again.

Also my wiper stalk is completely inactive, no washer pump action, no rear wipers, no front wipers, no headlight washers. I just used the wipers yesterday so I know they are still good, there has to be something going on here...

EDIT: READ TITLE AND UPDATED POSTING, FUSE 41 WAS BAD

[TerminatorX5]

The interior lights are all LED's but always have worked just like stock lights, fading in and out when the doors are open/closed, today they stayed on for an extra 20-30 seconds or so before fading out.[/QUOTE]

since the lights do not have fuses of their own, the LCM shunts off the lights that give problems to the LCM.. the visor lights are not on the LCM, they have fuse... when the issue is rectified, the LCM provides juice to the circuit again... sometimes, you need to "reset" the LCM.. there is not an actual reset procedure, but cycling power sometimes helps, as the LCM scans the lines again...

[Ricky Bobby]

Originally Posted by TerminatorX5

The interior lights are all LED's but always have worked just like stock lights, fading in and out when the doors are open/closed, today they stayed on for an extra 20-30 seconds or so before fading out.

since the lights do not have fuses of their own, the LCM shunts off the lights that give problems to the LCM.. the visor lights are not on the LCM, they have fuse... when the issue is rectified, the LCM provides juice to the circuit again... sometimes, you need to "reset" the LCM.. there is not an actual reset procedure, but cycling power sometimes helps, as the LCM scans the lines again...[/QUOTE]

the only thing is, the lights were all working today, they just stayed on longer than they should have after the door was closed.

I'm also afraid of them staying on when the car is locked and draining the battery, I need to check that when I go to lunch and make sure when I lock the car the lights go out!

And the whole wiper stalk being inactive thing, its weird as hell. Like you said maybe a few power cycles will get the gremlins out of the system.

[TerminatorX5]

The wipers - definetely a fuse somewhere... the wipers are controlled by the GM module - i was messing with it once, and when i activated the rain sensors when the car was off, the radio and the interior lights on the dash (not the dome lights) had come on... it worked for my purpose of closing the roof when sensing the rain, but it totally did not work as the car was not asleep... i was feeding the power up the wrong circuitry at the time... i did that deliberately but in your case, you may be feeding power somewhere by accident... i do not recall any special programming for the footwell lights but there might be something about those lights that sends gremlins around - maybe a programming line, maybe a dedicated fuse... the LCM might be compensating for those circuits by holding the interior lights longer - i don't have access to WDS at work ( calls for Java and Adobe SVT readers, not on work computers), but i will try to look at the footwell light wiring to see if they are wired to the LCM (no fuses but maybe programming) or if they have dedicated fuse (then LCM is feeding the lights by using alternative electric path)...

did it make sense?

[Ricky Bobby]

the footwell lights have worked great since I installed them, I only had problems since I initially "shorted out" the interior lights when installing the footwell housings, and found that removing and reinstalling fuse 14 turned everything back on to functional. (alarm goes off when you remove fuse 14 its very annoying)

Then I noticed my visor lights were not working, so although fuse 42 looked visually fine, I replaced with a spare 5 amp fuse yesterday and those were functional.

All looked well until this morning, when I noticed my wipers were not operational, and my lights did not fade in/fade out upon door closing like they should have.


It seriously could be just a gremlin since I pulled so many fuses yesterday and the modules need a few power cycles to reset themselves, my old VW used to do the same thing, after resetting the battery or something similar it used to take a few power cycles for the auto-up/down windows to work again....


I will report back at lunch if behavior changes when I am out for a ride...

[Ricky Bobby]

Alright nothing has changed but I can tell you this:

The right stalk for windshield wipers does NOTHING, no front wipers, no rear wiper, no winshield fluid being pumped, and no rear wiper fluid pumped and no headlight washers.


And as far as my interior lights go, they fade off when the car is locked, as they should. But if I were to get in and close the door, they stay on for a good 10-15 seconds, I'm not sure exactly but I will count when I go home.

They also do the same thing if i start the car, in normal circumstances I get in, start the car and the interior lights fade off upon startup, however now they will stay on for that 15 seconds or so on their own before turning off.

[Roadkill]

Possible ignition switch?

[TerminatorX5]

Originally Posted by Roadkill

Possible ignition switch?

hopefully not - i suspect something benign as a fuse or blown relay...

[Ricky Bobby]

Originally Posted by Roadkill

Possible ignition switch?

You might be on to something, as I just forwarded terminator the DIS doc on the interior lights soft closing, they are supposed to soft close when the key is turned to position 2, but have not done so.

I will test fuses for ignition switch when i get home as well, this still wouldn't explain wipers inoperative though?

[TerminatorX5]

fuse 14 - GM
fuse 28 - headlight washer
fuse 40 - wiper relay
fuse 41 - rain sensor
fuse 81 - rear wiper


fuse 41 is the only fuse that talks to wiper system and to GM... GM may have some issues with the wipers and as a result the interior lights do not operate as initially designed...

test those fuses, lets see what happens...